Installations comprising a programming device and a stimulating device operating independently of one another are already known. The programming device is constructed so as to record a treatment program on a fixed-storage data medium, and this data medium carrying the program is placed in the stimulating device in order to control it and to have the program executed.
The drawback of this system is its inflexibility, that is to say, the program thus recorded is immediately permanent, and cannot be adapted in a precise manner to the patient's case as a result of the use of ROMs.
Moreover, an installation comprising a programming device and a stimulating device capable of on-line working is known. However, in this case, there is no data medium independent of the two devices, the programming device having the role of enabling a program established by the therapist to be recorded in an RAM of the stimulating apparatus. The drawback is that, every time the stimulating device has to be used by a different patient, the program which it has received previously has to be erased and the program relating to the new patient has to be recorded again. Once the first program has been erased, no trace of it has been left anywhere and, when the first patient has to be treated again, it is necessary to re-record the program appropriate to him in the stimulating device once again. This results in excessive delays in the treatments and an irrational use of the hardware, with the possibility of risk of errors due to successive re-introductions of the same program at longer or shorter time intervals.
The present invention aims to provide an installation for neuromuscular electrical stimulation which is free from all the defects which have just been noted and which accordingly enables, on the one hand, a completely individualized program to be established for each patient, taking into account the physiological and pathological features of the patient. In addition, the installation has to ensure the patient's safety by subjecting the treatment to imposed limits in the intensity and duration of the currents used. This installation must, in addition, enable the same stimulating device to be used successively for different patients, without loss of time, that is to say by having this stimulating device controlled by different data media each corresponding to a particular patient, each of these data media containing a patient's individualized program. Thus, on the one hand each individualized program remains continuously available on the data medium and does not have to be retyped by the therapist; and on the other hand, the stimulating device is immediately available when there is a change of patient, since it then suffices to introduce into this device the data medium corresponding to the patient.